30 Day Yaoi Challenge, Day 7: Kizuna vol. 1

Ahhhh, Kizuna. This manga is not entirely what I was expecting in so many ways. The cover art is so pretty. Even though I knew it was new cover art, I thought the insides would be more modern… But they’re so 90’s! Everything’s kind of masculine and line-shaded, with real tones! That really surprised me for some reason. I also wasn’t sure what Kizuna was about. I could tell by the covers of all the volumes I bought that there was something to do with yakuza, but the back cover copy on the first volume showed absolutely no indication of this. Ah, well.

Kizuna is about a young kendo player named Ranmaru and a young yakuza heir named Kei who fall in love, despite something of a rivalry between them. They wind up moving in together during college, but their peaceful, domestic life is shattered when Kei’s estranged half-brother, Kai, runs away from home and ends up moving in with them. To make matters worse, Kai is hell bent on stealing Ranmaru away from Kei.

After an incident where Ranmaru gets drugged by a professor who wants to rape him, Kai saves him and winds up rapes him instead, thinking that Ranmaru wants it because the drug is also an aphrodisiac. But when Ranmaru starts calling out for Kei in the midst of it all, Kai realizes that he’ll never win Ranmaru’s heart. And so, he gives up and winds up going home shortly afterward. Then the story starts to shift back in time. Kai in elementary school forming a deep bond with one of his father’s underbosses, Masa. How Ranmaru and Kei met and became lovers. Kei struggling through the death of his mother, Ranmaru struggling through injuries that prevent him from ever playing kendo again and finally, Kai getting kidnapped and raped by a jealous man who wants to have Masa all to himself.

Obviously I haven’t escaped yaoi rape. This time I’m less pissed off by it though, but only because things are trickier The three big problems I have with the rape depicted in this volume is that a) the scene where Kai rapes Ranmaru is pretty gratuitous (the other scene isn’t played to get the readers excited); b) Kai doesn’t pay for his actions like the other rapists do because it was “consensual” thanks to the aphrodisiac/date-rape drug; and c) Kei kind of starts of his relationship with Ranmaru by raping him. I don’t think I have to explain my first problem, but I do need to talk about the other two.

Ranmaru’s professor/would-be rapist gets beat up by Kai before the guy can do anything except drug him, kiss him and start fondling him. Kai then goes back to kill the guy (or at least seriously maim him) and sticks a knife in at least one of the guy’s hands before Kei shows up, stops Kai and then proceeds to beat the crap out of the professor himself. Fast forward to when Kai gets raped, Masa stabs Kai’s rapist, then rips his guts out with a knife before pushing him out the window to his death. And what punishment does Kai get for raping Ranmaru, though he knew that Ranmaru was drugged and helpless, under the pretext that it was “consensual”? Kei makes him walk home from Shinjuku. *sigh*

Mostly, Kei is a very supportive boyfriend and for that I can applaud him. Kei just wants Ranmaru to be okay, he isn’t mad at Ranmaru for “sleeping with” his brother (their words, not mine) and he’s happy that Ranmaru loves him. He bends over backward to give Ranmaru emotional support during Ranmaru’s rehabilitation. BUT, and this is a very important but, before all this good stuff happens, Kei confesses his feelings for Ranmaru by grabbing him and forcing him down. Ranmaru protests, then decides he’s okay with it. He even thinks about how he could fight back, but is choosing not to do so because Kei is saying his name “sweetly.” Had Kei not said “I love you,” during this intercourse, Ranmaru would have broken Kei’s arms. Kei even begs forgiveness and apologizes as he’s doing it, which begs the question: Is this rape? Is Ranmaru’s silence a form of consent?

I feel hesitant to answer that last question, as silence as consent will be argued by the defense in the upcoming Steubenville rape trial, where a number of high school boys assaulted a girl who was extremely drunk, to the point where she was vomiting and blacking out. I won’t even bother to use the word “allegedly” because these kids were dumb enough to take photos and videos, then post a number them up on social media websites. The question won’t be whether or not they are found guilty, as much as on how many charges will they be found guilty.

Back to Kizuna, I think that Kei was (unfortunately) raping Ranmaru. Ranmaru was initially trying to get Kei to stop, but he did not. If he had, he would have only assaulted Ranmaru. That Ranmaru became quiet, did not clearly imply consent for me, especially because he was just not fighting back instead of silently participating. What did imply consent for me was when Ranmaru threw his arms around Kei and said “Too bad. If you hadn’t said that…I would have beat you up and broken both your arms.” (A funny way to consent, I know.) But by then, Kei had already crossed the line into what I am considering non-consensual intercourse. As Ranmaru said next, “there’s supposed to be an order for these things, idiot.”

And this, folks, is why I really hate rape in yaoi. Even if the lines are fuzzy, even if it actually moves the story forward, rape is a crutch in this genre. It is rarely treated in a way that is respectful to the victims. Instead, it is more often used to show the readers a steamy sex scene between two people who we’re then forced to accept as lovers, in spite of the somewhat heinous act just committed. It is used in lieu of learning how to properly write up the beginnings of a healthy, but passionate relationship. It’s just far easier to blur the lines of what is consensual and put in something steamy. I hate it.

What makes it even worse is that Kizuna did not escape this trap because, even though it spans multiple volumes, it had to start off as a one-shot like many yaoi manga are forced to do. It is probably cheaper for yaoi publishers to just do one-shots, but it stifles the creators and forces them to be tawdry in a bad way instead of creative. Frankly, I don’t really want to spend much of my money on bad, tawdry comics. So when we get down to it, this is why I usually don’t buy BL and yaoi.

Despite all this, I do think Kizuna is well-written in every other part and I do enjoy reading it. I am hoping that the next four volumes are not as rape-tastic.